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BitTorrent Community After SuprNova Shutdown
prostoalex writes "Folks from MonkeyMethods.org have researched the BitTorrent world after many popular destinations (SuprNova among others) have been shut down. Since BitTorrent always relied on the presence of trackers and servers hosting them, MonkeyMethods decided to see whether the shutdown impacted the BitTorrent community. So has the shutdown of centralized SuprNova had any impact? "In this case, centralization is a feature, not a necessity. Just look at del.icio.us most popular and you'll see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncover new places to find the files they're looking for.""
Monkeyin' Around: Is BitTorrent Dead?
Date: January 10, 2005
WARNING: "Monkeyin' Around" contains rambling and wild speculation on the future of digital media. Do not operate heavy machinery while reading. Read the first edition here. Visit our blog at http://blog.monkeymethods.org.
What the heck is this article about?
After the recent shutdowns in the BitTorrent community, notably the popular site SuprNova.org, many were left wondering if BitTorrent was on its last legs. You can read some of the coverage here . Since this happened, many people are asking: How big of a blow are these shutdowns? Is BitTorrent dead or dying?
Well, we had the same questions too, and decided we wanted to understand the distribution of torrent files on the Internet. Using this information, we can examine issues such as centralization and other important factors.
(If you want an introduction to BitTorrent, please read this Wired article and this FAQ)
Okay Sherlock, what did you guys do?
Well, first thing, we have some pretty interesting data lying around. One of the initial projects we decided to do as part of Monkey Methods was TowerSeek.org , which is a true crawler-based BitTorrent search engine. Unlike other sites that simply mirror either Google's torrent search functions (try "filetype:torrent induce" for example), SuprNova, or some other site, we wanted to build a real search engine that crawled the Internet automatically. We'll write more about this project soon, but you can give it a whirl right now.
As part of the backend, TowerSeek.org has a database of links to torrent files, which we realized could be used to understand the distribution of files on the Internet. This would tell us a couple important things:
How centralized are torrent files on the Internet?
Do torrent sites follow the 20/80 rule?
How long is the Long Tail?
These questions are all important because they concern vital (and interesting) differences between BitTorrent and other P2P protocols. Unlike Kazaa, Gnutella, and any others, BitTorrent has a fundamentally "web-based" interface. That means you go to a website in your browser (preferably Firefox), click on a link from that trusted site, and download. So you would expect these sites to vaguely follow the same distributions as websites on the Internet.
Also, through the same mechanisms, the architecture of BitTorrent is far more centralized than other P2P networks. For each file, there is a central "tracker" that keeps track of what clients have what pieces of the file, so clients can talk to each other and download efficiently. Kill the tracker, and you kill the ability of any client to trade files with each other. It is for these reasons that BitTorrent is almost more similar to a direct-connect protocol like FTP or HTTP than a P2P network like Kazaa.
All of these architectural differences make it interesting to look at the data. To answer the questions from above, we did some UNIX pipe-fu to dump out the pages from the database, aggregate them, sort them, and put them in an Excel friendly format, all in one step. 5 minutes later, we were analyzing away.
What did you find?
We found a lot of interesting things. First of all, it should be noted that the dataset was from early December, and thus preserves the distribution of torrents before the recent site shutdowns. It may be interesting to look at this data again in a couple months and see how it has changed over time.
The first thing we did we to simply take the mean, median and mode:
Mean
176
Median
3
Mode
1
Wow. That's a very skewed distribution. It's clearly biased towards a smaller number of sites with many torrents, followed by a long, long tail. In fact, 1 torrent at a domain is the most common statistic. Let's take a look at the graph:
Figure 1:
Ah ha! We can see that this is the classic Zipf Law distribution, at least it looks like it from first glance. How close
well, suprnova has been replaced by mininova
http://www.mininova.org/
Exeem, well that looks like it is a bit of a failure in my opinion. They have allowed people to rate downloads and attach comments etc. It has become a place to advertise and exeem also contains spyware. Edonkey nostalgia basically..
I doubt that the (MPAA / RIAA)'s efforts will have a lasting effect since suprnova was replaced fairly quickly and I think the replacement is actually better.
... but TorrentReactor.net is also quite good...
Firstly, Exeem is ridden with adware and spyware. I can't speak for everyone out there, but to me, this does not exactly keep on in the spirit of Suprnova.
Second, because Exeem is decentralized, it will eventually become just another Kazaa, Morpheus, etc etc, as the *AA starts seeding fake files.
As to the statement that BT is not going anywhere soon... well, who knows. BitTorrent has known issues with NATs and firewalls... and hopefully some future generation of BitTorrent (or a similar product) will be able to find solutions to these common ailments. As it is, leechers are a significant problem for many torrent networks.
/dev/random
Sure... Suprnova was a great place to meet your warez/gamez/moviez/mp3z needs... but it wasn't exactly the only Torrent site out there -- it was just the largest. As the *AA continues to go after every target within their lawyers' reach, the Torrent sites in Sweden, Russia, and other places are growing at break-neck speeds.
Basically, as long as their are "safe-harbors" for the trackers things will continue.
For all you pirates out there that want a good laugh, check out The Pirate Bay's legal responses to the *AA.
/dev/random
just add filetype:torrent to you google search.
Anime
http://tracker.anime-fin.net:6969/
http://thehawks.org/hawks/bt/
http://gits.no-jutsu.com/gits/
http://bt.zhentarim.net/
http://www.anime-legion.net/
http://kaa.animeconnection.net/torrentpage/
http://www.animelab.com/anime.manga/bittorrent/
http://www.baka-updates.com/
http://torrents.chaotixubs.com/
http://www.animesuki.com/
http://www.animetorrents.com/
http://www.gotwoot.net/
http://www.spisoft.net/Honobono/
http://a.scarywater.net/ large
http://www.anime-kraze.org/
http://paikia-fansubs.no-ip.com:8080/
http://www.lunaranime.org/
http://bittorrent.frozen-layer.net/
http://torrent.thegreatbeyond.net/
http://www.makenshi.com/
http://www.onegaistudios.com/
These sites aren't doing anything illegal (as far as I know, which isn't a whole lot so please correct me if I'm wrong), but just telling people where they can find what in some cases are copyright infringements.
That's often illegal. Remember, what Napster basically did was to tell people who, precisely, was distributing music illegally.
Basically there's three different ways to infringe a copyright.
Direct infringement is when a person infringes on any of the exclusive rights listed in 17 USC 106, 106A, or 602. 106 is the important one of those, and among the rights it lists are the exclusive rights to reproduce (which downloading infringes on) and to distribute (which uploading infringes on).
However, recognizing that sometimes there will be parties that should be held liable despite not performing the infringing act themselves, there are the other two ways. That there should be this indirect liability at all is not unusual; it's fairly common in many areas of the law.
Contributory infringement only exists where there is an underlying direct infringement. Where a party, with knowledge of a direct infringement, induces, causes, or materially contributes to the direct infringement of another, it is also liable for the infringement.
Vicarious infringement also only exists where there is an underlying direct infringement. Where a party, regardless of knowledge, has the right and ability to control the direct infringement of another, and derives a sufficiently direct financial benefit from the infringement, it is also liable for the infringement.
These are what brought down Napster. They're frequently used to bring down venues of all kinds, whether online or off. For example, the owners of flea markets where vendors would sell infringing works have been held liable.
There is a degree of a safe harbor for ISPs in specific thanks to 17 USC 512, but in order to be protected from litigation, a variety of specific requirements must be met, and some of them require affirmative action on the part of the ISP (e.g. registering a contact with the US Copyright Office). So many that might have gained some protection if they'd tried to get it, end up without it. Other times, when you're wondering how someone can possibly still be in business, it very well may be because of this.
Still, with regards to torrent trackers, and sites involved with the BT scene, there's likely a very significant danger of some form of indirect liability attaching even for comparatively minor things, like acting as a facilitator to an infringement.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
http://www.torrentspy.com/
No logins. No bs. Just lots of torrents.
And if you already own a copy of the work, then it is not illegal. I know I've downloaded a movie on more than one occasion when my DVD got scratched beyond repair.
Sorry dude, downloading a copy of something you already own is copyright infringement. Technically, making a backup is also infringement. Fair use is only a defense against prosecution for such an infringement, and it is generally considered a strong enough defense to defend you in the case of duping your own disc for backup. But letting someone else dupe their disc for you is a lot harder to defend under the aegis of fair use.
For a relevant example - consider mp3.com. They came up with a service where you could purchase a copy of any of 80,000 different CDs they would pop your legit, original recording disc in the mail and then at the same time make it possible for you to immediately listen to a streaming mp3 version of the exact same album. Or, you could prove you had physical posession of the disc by inserting it into your PC's cdrom and running a validation program from mp3.com and they would also make the streaming version available to you, at no charge.
No question that you owned a legit copy because you just bought it and they just snail mailed it, or you had to physically put it into your computer. BUT, mp3.com lost big time in court and the settlement destroyed most of the money raised by their IPO and ultimately resulted in them being acquired and smothered by one of the RIAA members.
Here's a quickee link about the case and settlements.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No, I don't think it's dead.
Tons of torrent sites still exist: For everything (music/movies/games/etc):
ISOHunt (both BT and IRC)
VIP Torrents
For TV:
BTEFNet
TV-Swarm
TVTorrents
And for those who are only into "legal" material:
LegalTorrents
Not to mention, most Linux distributions offer a BitTorrent alternative download method for obtaining the ISO.
So it's definitely not dead...
Suprnova was never shut down by the RIAA or the MPAA. The operators of Suprnova voluntarily shut it down after being payed by the company that developed Exeem.
Suprnova was conveniently taken down during the MPAA crackdown and was replaced with an advertisment for Exeem. Suprnova's operators effectively sold out its entire fanbase.